A Friendly Game
by saralinda
Summary: Light one-shot: Casey Jones and Raphael encounter a mysterious stranger while playing pond hockey.


**AN:** I do not own or profit from the TMNT. I _do_ enjoy a good game of hockey.

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Casey Jones experimentally hefted his new carbon-filament hockey stick.

Raphael's voice rang out from the opposite end of the frozen pond. "Let's see whatcha got, ya nancy."

The perpetual grin of Casey's vintage goalie mask was all the response Raphael got before the big man charged down the ice.

"Goongala!"

"Yeah, whatever!"

Flecks of shaved ice spurted up behind Casey's blades. His stride lengthened until he was skating flat out, carrying the puck well in front of him, his hot breath rising in frozen puffs. The scrape of his blades on the ice and the sound of his breathing drowned out Raphael's jeers and echoed dully off the snow-covered hemlocks, spruce, and pines that crowded around the frozen pond. It was one of his favorite sounds.

Raphael, his smooth green head protected by a battered helmet, waited low and ready. He had all the armor he needed concealed beneath an old Detroit Redwings jersey. The tape on his wooden stick was ragged around the edges of the blade, but he held it with a deadly patience, mirroring Casey's movements with his own as his adversary approached.

Casey's worn New York Rangers shirt covered a pair of shabby shoulder pads, but that was the extent of his armor. "Pond hockey," he always preached, "is a pure sport. Bruises. Pain. Gore. Fancy equipment? Fuggettaboutit."

He drove toward Raphael, feinted right, and then spun, all the while keeping the puck glued to the end of his stick. His back collided heavily with Raph's shoulder as the turtle whirled in unison with him, striking out to steal the puck just as Casey roofed it into the lone net at the edge of the ice.

"SCORE, one-nothing!" Casey crowed as Raph dug the puck out of the goal. "The Central Park Midnight Frozen Freak Series belongs to The Man, the One and Only, Casey Jones! YEAH!"

Raphael reached out easily with his stick and whipped his friend's feet out from under him; Casey fell heavily to the ice.

"There's one for Raphael, Icemaster, King of the Mutants!"

Casey flipped his own stick expertly behind Raph's knees, bringing his friend down next to him with a crunch. "Whatever, 'Icemaster.' Ya don't mess with The Man, especially when you're that slow."

He rose to one knee but Raph was already on his feet, towering over his friend. "Who's slow now, princess?"

"You couldn't catch me if you was Ray Borque with a rocket glued to yer shell, ya pansy," Casey taunted.

Raph's stick came crashing down but his friend had already rolled away across the ice.

"Awww yeah, now comes my favorite part of hockey!" Raphael's gloves dropped to the ice. "The beatdown!" He cast the stick aside and fumbled with his helmet.

Casey seized the opportunity to jerk the back of Raph's Redwings jersey over his head. "My favorite part is you getting lost in your shirt!"

Raph's leg shot out, but Casey had already covered a good stretch of ice, laughing maniacally. All at once he skidded to a halt, sending up a fine spray of frozen water.

Raphael's shouts were muffled under his jersey. Casey could vaguely hear words that sounded like "death," and "blood," and "sonofaBITCH!" but he was too distracted by the sight of a stranger approaching their pond to pay the tirade much notice.

This particular pond had a lot of good things going for it. For one, the ice always froze just right—there weren't too many ridges and bumps, and it was sheltered enough from the wind to prevent snowdrifts. But more importantly, it was relatively isolated and the trees surrounding it made a nice screen from unwelcome onlookers. Most skaters liked lights on the ice and hot chocolate and a Zamboni cruising through every now and then. Casey and Raph liked the darkness; the ambient glow from the city and whatever moonlight was available provided all the illumination they needed. This was their territory.

"We got a visitor on home ice, bro'," Casey called to Raphael. Almost before the words were out of his mouth the turtle managed to free his head from his shirt. He was at Casey's side in an instant.

"What the heck is _that _doing near our pond_?_" he snarled, reaching for his _sai_. "And how far am I going to kick its overgrown butt?"

The husky figure, half-concealed by the shadows of an overhanging hemlock, inched down the bank. Casey's knuckles whitened around his stick. Whatever this thing was, it didn't look human.

With a bit of trouble the visitor untangled himself from the undergrowth and lurched onto the ice, wobbling a bit. The full moon emerged from behind the cloud wrack, revealing massive limbs and a shadowy, misshapen head.

"Dude," whispered Casey in awe. "We got a _goalie_."

"Some goalie," Raph snorted, hitching his jersey back into place over his _sai_ and shoving his oversized gloves back on his large green hands. "He moves like you do after 13 beers and a roundhouse kick to the nuts. I don't got time to school beginners."

Casey sized up the new player and had to agree with Raph. It was disappointing, but this guy didn't seem like much. He didn't appear to know what to do with his stick, for one thing. And after taking a few steps across the ice, he almost immediately had to clutch onto the goal to keep from falling over. When he finally did fall flat on his large padded behind, a high-pitched shriek could clearly be heard coming from under his helmet. Raphael was right; if anyone skated like a girl, it was this guy.

"So what do we do, just keep playing and pretend like he's not here?"

Raphael opened his mouth to answer, but at that moment a miracle seemed to be occurring right before their eyes. The goalie suddenly butterflied neatly to his feet and began warming up. He skated in a crouch, pushing off from the heel in a fluid and powerful stride while keeping his catcher poised in front of him. Cutting to a stop, he swiftly skated backwards for a few minutes, circling the net at the far end of the pond before halting between the rusty pipes. In a kind of grand finale he executed a perfect split.

Standing, he faced Casey and Raphael. Raising a large gloved hand, he beckoned.

"He wants us to bring it, Case."

Something began to boil in Casey's gut. It was like pride and anger and adrenalin, all rolled into one. This was _their_ pond. Their rink. Heck, he had even welded the goals together himself. He raised a stick in response to the goalie's challenge. "Then we bring it, Casey Jones style! Watch this!"

The big guy had already wiped out once; he could skate a little, Casey had to admit, but no way was he going to be fast enough on his feet to stop a Jones Breakaway. Picking up the puck he charged head-on toward the goal, aiming for the space between the keeper's catcher and his left hip. But then there was no space to shoot for; the goalie's big paw came down with impossible speed and scooped the puck out of the air.

Casey was glad he was wearing his mask when he skated back to Raphael. He could feel the red glow of shame leaking from his ears clear down to his chest. "Shut down," he muttered, shaking his head. "Shut down on home ice."

"Figures you'd go for the obvious frontal assault. Let the ninja get the job done."

Raphael raised his stick and squinted down the ice. The goalie was little more than a massive, shadowy blob against the bank beyond. Picking up the puck, Raph put some power into his stride and sailed in from the left. To Casey, his strategy seemed clear: draw the keeper out beyond his reckoning and then, with some sleight-of-hand, angle the puck into an empty net.

"We'll see what you're made of now, newbie," he snorted, watching his friend get into position.

But apparently Raphael's strategy was clear to the goalkeeper as well, for seconds later his shot was deflected off of stacked pads. Raph swiped at the puck again for a rebound, but the goalie managed to bat it away with his stick. Casey avoided eye contact with Raphael as he returned to center ice; it was better that way. Instead he watched as the goalie gained his feet and whacked the puck back to them.

For the next hour, one after the other, Casey Jones and Raphael took turns trying to score on the newcomer—only to be denied each time.

"You know," said Casey, brandishing his stick between gasps for breath, "I usually use this thing to beat the snot outta bad guys."

"Good excuse, bro," replied Raphael, who was slightly less out of breath. "But here's one turtle who ain't gonna be made a fool of tonight."

Casey figured that when Raph missed again it was going to spell trouble. But it was worse than he expected. On his next turn, Raphael caught his skate blade in a ridge of ice and landed on his back, wildly spinning toward a bank beneath a heavily snow-laden evergreen. With an alarming "crack!" his shell bashed into the base of the tree. Casey winced as his friend was momentarily buried in the avalanche that followed.

Head down and shoulders hunched, Raphael skated back to the pond's center, steam rising from his sweaty, snow-covered body. "Not ONE word. No one ever hears about this, got it?"

"Raph, hockey is a psychological sport, you know. You gotta psychologize the puck into the net as much as you muscle it in."

"_Psychologize_ this," Raph growled, lifting his jersey and drawing a _sai_.

"I dunno what kind of penalty minutes we're looking at with that one, man. Probably a game misconduct. Probably suspension." Casey kept his tone light, though he was beginning to feel a little worried about the goalie. True, he was annoyingly hard to beat—but that didn't mean he deserved a dose of Raphael's rage.

"Casey, that bastard's gettin' smug over there. Did you see the way he was lookin' at me?"

"You don't like it, then you need to grow another shell, snowcone! This is hockey. It ain't for sissies. What we need to do is a little two-on-one. Skate down, use more of the ice, keep our heads up—play the game!"

"Yes, _coach_." Raphael sheathed the _sai_ and took up his stick again.

Casey looked him over critically. "Fix your sweater. I don't lead sloppy troops into battle."

Raph yanked his jersey down over his weapons with a scowl. "Pretty enough for you now? C'mon, let's score one so we can hold our heads high on this pond again!"

"You just skate your lane and follow my lead. We'll show 'im how it's done."

They turned, prepared to enter the fray once more, and found that they were alone. The net at the far end of the ice stood vacant, and the moon shone down on the empty, carved-up surface of the pond. Casey's mind raced; how could this guy have possibly gotten away without them seeing?

"No! Damnit! NO!"

"Easy, Raph. He shouldn't be that hard to find. And he owes us a point."

"He owes it, and I'm gonna take it out of him."

"Are you crazy? Don't piss off the goalie. We might never get another chance to shoot on an actual person, remember?"

Raphael's anger subsided a bit. "Let me rough him up a little, Case. Let 'im know who he's playing with out here."

"The longer we talk about this, the more time we give him to get away, if you know what I mean."

Raph cut swiftly to the edge of the pond and pulled off his skates, shoving them into his duffle bag along with his jersey and helmet. Casey did likewise. It wasn't difficult to see where the netminder had pulled himself up on the bank at the far end of the pond and plowed a path through the undisturbed snow.

Central Park muffled under two feet of white powder might seem quiet, but Casey and Raph took no chances. Face concealed under his black hoodie, Raphael moved stealthily through the tree shadows while his friend followed close behind him. The broad trail wound through a wraith-like playground toward a thick stand of trees. It disappeared into the mouth of a wide drainage pipe concealed in the undergrowth.

Raphael dropped the duffel bag. "There's a lot about this that ain't right, Case."

"There's a lot about this that's totally crazy, Raph. But I'm game if you are."

Raphael entered the drainage pipe first, _sais _drawn and ready. Casey hunched himself over and followed, trying to keep his stick from bashing against the top of the pipe. Their feet made a loud crunching noise in the thick crust of sludge at the bottom. Well, so much for a sneak attack.

Casey squinted and tried to imagine why the goalie would have come down here, and how they were going to get him back over to the pond so they could get some points out of him. He was imagining so hard that he wasn't prepared when his friend stopped suddenly in front of him. His forehead slammed into the back of Raph's shell.

"What the…OW!"

"Shhhh…do you hear that?"

"I think I got brain damage!"

"Just listen a minute!"

Casey quieted and strained his ears. Laughter?

"It's a girl," fumed Raph. "And she's _giggling_."

"Why would some chick crawl down a drainpipe, Raph?"

"Because," said Raph in low and deadly tones (and Casey had to hand it to him, he was keeping himself in check fairly well), "she's dumb enough to hang out with my brother Don."

The laughter increased and a familiar voice came echoing down the pipe. "Raphie got beat by a GIRL, dude!"

Pushing forward through the slippery pipe, Casey and Raphael emerged in a pebble-and-trash-strewn ravine where they found their runaway goalie.

Donatello had a quiet grin on his face while Michelangelo was howling with glee and rolling on the ground. Still clad in heavy equipment, April's cheeks were bright red; her shoulders were heaving with silent laughter and tears streamed from her eyes. She was trying to pull off the goalie pads, which Casey could see were fused together in a kind of exoskeleton and rigged up with a remote control.

"Just testing my new invention, guys. I call it 'The Wall'," said Don, cheerfully waving the control box in the air. He was clearly enjoying himself, but not as much as Mikey was.

"Raph, can you show me how to do that trick? You know, the one where you fell, and spun out of control, and slid into the tree? And got all that snow on your head? And almost CRIED? 'Cuz I wanna learn that one."

"How's this Mikey? I teach you about pain. Now!"

Casey moved to April's side as Raphael launched after his youngest brother. He was clutching her discarded jersey. "Babe…I have to say, that was hot."

Donatello immediately stood up from where he was stuffing the rest of the goalie kit into an oversized hockey bag. "I'm just going to bring this back to my lab for some adjustments. Even if I get my shell thrashed, it was worth it. Thanks April." Giving her a warm smile, Don picked up his gear and followed his brothers.

April mostly had control of herself, apart from having a violent case of the hiccups. Casey pulled her close.

"Sweet thing, I wanna take you skating."

"Now?"

"Yeah, unless you have a date or somethin'. And April? Can you do me a favor and…wear the jersey?"


End file.
